The first thing I heard about Grandmother Chung taking sick was from Tyrone, who came by the house late one evening to tell me.
‘I been asking Beverley for weeks if she been in touch with you.’
‘Weeks, Tyrone? GC been sick that long?’
‘She tek bad two maybe three months back. Took to her bed and not raised herself since.’
‘And the doctors?’
‘Say there is nothing they can do. She just slowly going downhill.’
What was wrong with her? Kidney trouble. ‘Just come see the old woman when yu can.’
The next morning I went over to Hagley Park Road where the maid greeted me with a sober face and the place was sad and silent like maybe GC had already passed. Beverley was sitting in an armchair by the side of the bed. Her grandmother was asleep. A fraction of the woman I used to know. Like she had physically shrunk and was fading away into nothingness.
It was such a long time since Beverley and I had seen each other. I didn’t know how she would feel about me turning up unannounced. But she surprised me, standing straight up like she did and opening her arms to take me in.
‘I didn’t know if you would come.’
‘Of course I’ve come. Tyrone only told me last night.’
How we sat? Next to each other holding hands. That is how we spent the days and nights, sometimes sleeping sometimes not, as we listened to GC’s wheezing chest and failing breath. And watched her complexion get more and more grey as the hours and days ticked by. The Chiang Kai-shek incident we never mentioned. No apologies or post-mortem needed. It was gone. Dissolved by time.
The funeral was simple. A glass-fronted coffin. White lilies. Her parish priest. And family, including Beverley’s parents who came in from New York, an aunt from Washington and an uncle from England. None of whom Beverley or Tyrone seemed to care about very much. Or know particularly well for that matter.
So we sat. Beverley between Tyrone and me, in the front pew, as we bid farewell to the woman who had shaped so much of our lives.
A week later, when the will was read, we discovered that Grandmother Chung had left everything to Beverley and Tyrone. Every last penny of what was quite a sizeable sum.
‘Captain Charles Meacham,’ he said, extending his hand to be shaken.
I shook it. ‘A captain now?’
‘I seem to be going down in the world. First a colonel, then a major and now a captain.’
He laughed. A pleasant, easy-going kind of laugh. ‘This is just a courtesy introduction. I am not going to hound you about communists like Hutton. The good major has done his duty and is now safely back in England.’ He smiled. ‘There are other things I find more interesting.’
The things Captain Meacham found more interesting? Having himself a damn good time, which is all he seemed to do twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. Drinking liquor, gambling and carrying on with as many women as he could lay his hands on. The younger the better.
Still, I suppose there wasn’t much else for him to do because in September 1961 Norman Manley had to hold a referendum for the people of Jamaica to decide if we wanted to stay in the West Indies Federation. That much controversy there was about whether or not the smaller islands were dragging us down, which was Bustamante’s opinion.
So the nation voted and we left the Federation and Manley and Busta went to England to see the Queen who granted us independence. To take effect from 6th August 1962. So really Meacham was just kicking his heels. The British army was leaving and I would finally be free.
But not quite, because actually I was just like Jamaica. Colonised by the British, used for their own ends and now abandoned to my own fate. So I asked Meacham to take me to England.
‘I can’t do that! On what basis could I possibly do a thing like that?’
‘Captain Meacham, I am in danger here. Once you leave. Can’t you see?’
‘Let’s not get melodramatic. People are excited about independence. All those other things will blow over. Trust me. No one knows anything about your involvement with the Lue Fah Yee incident or the bus driver and his friends.’
‘They do, Captain.’
He looked at me understandingly. Scratched his ample forehead. ‘They will forget.’
Beverley thought maybe Meacham was right. Nothing bad had happened to me so far. Besides, it wasn’t the British army that was keeping me safe. It was Pao, or rather the name of Yang Pao, and the Mrs that came before it.
‘As long as I am married to him.’
‘Oh Fay. Divorce?’
Not in Beverley Chung’s book of Catholic etiquette. Affairs, yes. Divorce, out of the question. ‘That is why Audley and I never married. To avoid these kinds of complications.’
She fiddled in her bag. Extracted a lipstick and small turquoise mirror in the shape of a fan. And in between tending to her lips and using her little finger to tidy up the corner of her mouth she said, ‘Anyway, isn’t Father Kealey supposed to be talking you out of that? How long can it take? Doesn’t he have other sinners to attend to?’
I ignored it. Poured myself a drink instead from GC’s cabinet. Then I asked her what she knew about hiring a private detective.
Her eyes widened in excitement. ‘Serious? What for?’
‘I need to find out about someone, that’s all.’
‘Gloria Campbell.’
‘The whore?’ I nodded. ‘After all these years? You think it’s going to make any difference to anything?’ I didn’t answer.
She studied me carefully. And then she said, ‘I’ll ask our attorney. He has to know somebody.’
‘Somebody reliable and trustworthy, Beverley. Discreet.’
‘Discretion is my middle name. Didn’t you know?’ And then she smiled as she raised the champagne glass to her lips.
The strange thing? The thought of my father with Gloria Campbell was more upsetting to me than my knowledge of her and Pao. About Pao there was a sort of impersonal acceptance. About Papa there was a deep sense of betrayal.
So when the detective told me that what they were doing together was running an illegal money-lending business I was relieved. It seemed more wholesome than him having an affair with a seasoned prostitute. Because it was the sort of thing my father would do. Make money. Even if it was under as opposed to over the counter. I felt I could look him in the eye again. Touch his hand. Share my woes. Despite reports of a house in Ocho Rios. I just decided to ignore that. Imagined they were counting their money.
The photograph? Taken while she was crossing King Street and looking sideways at the traffic, was a picture of a woman in charge of herself. A woman in control of what she was doing. Serious but relaxed. Her solid black build, with curves in all the right places, I’d already seen from Sissy’s veranda. But her satin-smooth skin and the confidence in her eyes I only saw in the close-up snapshot.
The child was harder to swallow. A girl exactly the same age as Karl. Expelled from her prep school for giving backchat to the nuns and fighting with her classmates in the schoolyard.
I got her address in Barbican and drove over there. Late afternoons, sometimes early evening. Occasionally, I took a trip in the morning. Parking the car around the corner and walking past the house like I was just strolling the street going about my own business. Once or twice I even took a cab and let it cruise by.
All I saw was the old woman. So ancient it was a wonder she could manage the household chores. Why employ somebody like that? With a child in the house to be attended to. It was beyond me.
The child I spotted a few times. Coming and going in her school uniform, sitting on the veranda, skipping in the yard with her rope, talking to the old woman. She was black, maybe even a shade darker than her mother. Not like Karl and Mui, light-skinned with Karl’s wavy curls or Mui’s dead-straight Chinese hair. No. Her hair was African. Tight like her mother’s. The sort of hair that needed relaxing and ironing and constant tending with coconut oil; conditioning and moisturising the ends; tying a scarf around it at night to prevent breaking and tearing; a wide-toothed comb for careful disentanglement; hair pomade and grapeseed oil to withstand the high temperature of the Marcel iron. When she is older. But now, the child had short plaits that stuck out at the side, and danced back and forth as she hula-hooped.
Gloria? Yes. I glimpsed her once or twice because it seemed she still spent most of her time in the house across the street from Sissy even though she’d stopped living there years ago, just before the child was born. How she looked? Beautiful. Inside and out.
Pao? Never. Not once in the many weeks I was traipsing over there. But it didn’t matter. I could feel his presence. His aura like a giant cloak hanging over the place.
Papa? No. Thank God. I don’t think I could have faced that. So I stopped driving to Barbican before that particular calamity occurred.
I didn’t say anything to Papa about Gloria. That was his business. His secret. I didn’t say anything to Pao either. But I knew.
Beverley’s plan using GC’s money was to open a shop. Just like she’d talked about all those years back.
‘In Constant Spring. The premises are perfect. Come and look.’
I did. She was right. It was perfect. One vast open floor to be fitted with display cabinets and counters, and stocked with Chinese rugs and vases, garments and tea, tableware and kitchenware. Everything from silver-tipped ivory chopsticks to oversized lacquered screens. Chung’s Emporium. Like Nancy Lee’s father’s backyard storeroom. Only a hundred times bigger and brighter and better.
The beam on her face could have lit the city for a week. ‘Tyrone is going to come in as well. As a partner.’
I smiled. ‘That’s fantastic.’ And then I said, ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
‘Never been more sure about anything.’ She spun around in the empty space, sending her skirt fluttering in the air. ‘Want to be a partner as well?’
‘Me? I don’t have any money, Beverley.’
‘But don’t you think we were made for this? Dues In/Dues Out. Procurement, import orders, inventories, storage, distribution. It was all the same thing, wasn’t it? The Royal Army Ordnance Corps.’
‘That was you, Beverley. I was doing something entirely different.’
She sat down on her haunches, gathering her skirt about her. Such an unlikely pose for a woman like Beverley Chung.
‘Ever since I left the army I’ve been trying to think what it is I want to do. Nothing ever came to mind. Apart from this. Remember?’
I nodded. ‘I didn’t think you were serious.’
‘Maybe I wasn’t then. I don’t know. But with GC gone it seems like I should make an effort to do something. Not just flit away my days sleeping and eating and dancing. And spending her money.’ She looked at me. ‘Know what I mean? And the Chinese theme. Because of her. GC. Who she was. How she lived. Seems like the only thing we should sell. In honour of her.’ She paused. ‘So we going to do this then?’
‘You do it.’
She stood up. Came over and linked my arm as we walked towards the door and the smell of roasting peanuts from the sidewalk vendor.
‘We will do it.’
‘I don’t want my name on anything, Beverley. Seriously. Absolutely nothing. I don’t want anybody coming to track me down. I’ve had enough of that.’
‘The British are leaving, Fay. Haven’t you heard?’
And so they did because on 22nd June 1962 the Royal Hampshire Regiment left Jamaica, bringing to a close three hundred years of British troops stationed on the island. It was the end of an era. The slave masters had gone. We were in charge of ourselves now.
To celebrate independence, we had eight days of singing and dancing and street parades. Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret even came to wish us well in a spectacular ceremony at the National Stadium attended by a multitude of local and foreign dignitaries. Lowering the British flag at midnight and raising the black, green and yellow of Jamaica just before they set off the fireworks. A splendid affair which I did not attend. Why? Because I was cross they had left me behind after changing the entire course of my life. They were gone. And I was still here. Without a handler, which is what Captain Meacham liked to call himself.
So I took Karl and went to the movies. The drive-in at Harbour View. Five films back-to-back. All through the night. Most of which he spent asleep in the rear seat of the car. Me? I was dead to the world as well. With my eyes wide open.
Afterwards, I was relieved it was over. The jubilation. Glad that things could get back to normal with our new prime minister, the first prime minister of an independent Jamaica, Mr Alexander Bustamante, going to work to show us what he could do to make a better life for all. But honestly, I didn’t feel that optimistic. And all Pao’s prodding and poking did was to make me angry.
‘What is it? Yu worried what Busta going do when he make his stand for the working man? Or maybe yu think we was better off under British rule? I know that is how some people feel.’ Another time he told me: ‘Slavery is over. We in charge of our own destiny now.’
And I said, ‘God help us.’ Which he didn’t like.
‘Yu would rather we mek some links with America then?’
I was tired of listening to him. Tired of talking about it. Tired of the sloganising. ‘Out of Many, One People’, even though we were quite some mixture.
Slaves from Africa; Chinese and Indian indentured workers; poor Scots, Irish and Welsh imported to increase the white population; wage-labourers from northern Europe; Jews given permission by Cromwell to settle in British colonies; Chinese men escaping the civil war encouraged to become the shopkeeping middle class, like the Lebanese dry-goods pedlars fleeing the Muslim Turks; the Maroons, living high in the mountains; and, of course, the descendants of the white planters including their mulatto offspring.
And then thinking of Mama with her afternoon tea and cake, so allegedly proud of her slave heritage but who, still inside, harboured the attitude she had about black men. Maybe about all black people, including herself. Thinking of that and remembering everything I learned from Isaac, I said to Pao, ‘My whole life has been spent being white for Cicely to stop her feeling ashamed, and being black for Cicely to stop her feeling alone. I had to be Catholic for Cicely because Methodist was too black, and I had to hold back at school for Cicely because being smart was too white. I had to spend with style for Cicely so she could show off her new wealth and class, and I had to be prim and chaste for Cicely so she could protect the reputation of black womanhood. And where me being Chinese came into all of this for her I don’t know. But whatever I did she picked and poked and prodded, and found fault with me because in Jamaica the colour of your skin still counts for everything. You think independence is going to change that?’
But really the whole long speech was unfair. I had pinned it all on Mama when it was me. My snobbery and my acceptance of my privilege. It was my guilt.
So Pao and I left it at that. And Beverley bought her store. Opening it in grand style in the spirit of a new Jamaica. We were in business, with the Chung name above the door and me moving silently in the shadows as I had learnt to become accustomed.
I waited quite a while before mentioning Gloria’s child to Michael. The daughter who went to St Andrew High School at the same time Karl started at St George’s College.
‘You mean Esther?’
A wave of shock rolled over me. ‘You know? How do you know? What do you know?’
He patted the bench next to him, urging me to sit down. I didn’t feel like it. I wanted to see his face when he gave me his explanation. He crossed his legs. Crossed his wrists over his knee.
‘The child was in trouble, Fay. With school.’ I knew but still I wanted to hear it from him. ‘Her mother brought her to me seeking help. Guidance.’ He paused. Studied me a little. ‘The only reason I saw her is because of who her father is. When Gloria told me I felt I had to help.’
‘Who is the father?’ I wanted him to say it.
‘You don’t know?’
‘I want you to tell me.’
He looked down at the ground. Took one hand and brushed his trouser leg like he was removing some unwanted speck from his thigh except nothing was there.
‘Yang Pao.’
The jolt I felt was swift and brief. Not the heart-stopping, chest-wrenching quake I’d imagined it would be. Maybe because, in truth, I already knew.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked him. He nodded. ‘How can you be so sure?’
The guilty look on his face and the accompanying silence told me that he’d had it from the horse’s mouth. Not just taken Gloria’s word for it.
‘How long have you been seeing Pao?’
Michael stood up and tried to take hold of my arm. ‘It isn’t what you think,’ he said but I shrugged away just as a gardener passed us with his barrow in what suddenly felt like the most exposed public garden ever created.
‘Nothing you have said to me have I ever repeated to Pao. Or anyone else, for that matter.’
I believed him. But my heart was still pounding. Not for the reason I would have imagined, but because I was jealous. Jealous of sharing him. With Pao and Gloria. And now the child, Esther. Because what I wanted was for Michael to be mine and mine alone.